


October 2: "People like you have no imagination."

by Qophia



Series: Qoph's Fictober 2018 [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Ficlet, Fictober, Gen, Solas Being Solas, Vivienne doesn't get enough credit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 10:31:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16173278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qophia/pseuds/Qophia
Summary: If Vivienne must be dragged personally across every inch of the frozen backwoods of the empire, she might as well dedicate the time to something constructive and entertaining.





	October 2: "People like you have no imagination."

**Author's Note:**

> I'm absolutely team #magerightsormagefights #andersdidnothingwrong, and I take a lot of issue with Vivienne's canon character, but I think she really got short shrift from the writing team—and even less from the fandom (I know, quelle surprise for a character who's a Black woman). Solas gets the last word in a lot of their party banters; I wanted to explore what might happen if Viv got a bit more space to keep replying (as well as to consider what her motivation might be behind the way she talks down to Solas when they're in the party together).

Of all the things Vivienne had expected to try her patience when she chose to extend the offer of her aid to the fledgling Inquisition, she had somehow failed to anticipate that not only would the Right Hand of Divine Justinia and the so-called Herald of Andraste share an affection for deeply questionable romance novels, but that they would _also_ be gauche enough to exclude everyone else from their discussions.

Here she was: Madame de Fer, Enchanter to the Imperial Court of Orlais, youngest First Enchanter elected from her generation, personal confidante of the empress herself, so very nearly the Grand Enchanter of all southern Thedas... riding to Emprise du Lion from a reclaimed ruin in the Frostback Mountains at the height of winter, an elven apostate behind her mounted on a glorified deer and the closest thing to her peers riding ahead, heads tucked together as they whispered furtively with only the occasional glance back to ensure that the mages were still in sight (or, more likely, not eavesdropping).

Well. If she must be dragged personally across every inch of the frozen backwoods of the empire, she might as well dedicate the time to something constructive and entertaining. Vivienne shifted her weight back in the saddle, pulling lightly on the reins until her courser paced alongside Solas’s hart. She wondered, not for the first time, whether he had chosen the mount specifically for its stature.

“You know, Solas,” she said, as he abandoned whatever private musings to turn a blankly polite expression down toward her, “you do an _excellent_ job of spellcasting without any concrete knowledge of technique.”

“Your rigorous training lays a solid foundation, true.” He nodded soberly. “It also creates boundaries—limits—where none need exist.”

“I do prefer to have boundaries between myself and the demons, my dear,” she needled smugly.

“Of course!” He tossed a hand into the air. “You endured the Harrowing, where your Circle teaches you that all demons attempt to possess you.”

“Not at all,” Vivienne said, with a sharp shake of her head. “Many of them simply want to kill you. I suppose _you_ would claim otherwise,” she prompted.

“Why should I?” Solas shrugged. She wasn’t quite sure if he sounded more frustrated or resigned. “You would not believe me. You have learned your lessons all too well, and your education has rendered you incapable of imagination.”

Vivienne’s laughter was a crystalline tinkle. “Solas, dear, the ancient magisters’ breaching of the Golden City was _imaginative_. An apostate deserter committing an act of terrorism to spark a civil war we mages have no hope of winning was _imaginative_. Corypheus corrupting the Grey Wardens and sacrificing the Divine was _imaginative_. Warden-Commander Clarel slitting the throats of her own people to bind an army of demons was _imaginative_. The ability to conjure grandiose designs without the sophistication to anticipate the consequences of enacting them is _not_ a quality to which I aspire.”

Solas grimaced. “Have you truly never once wondered what you might achieve were you not constrained by the conventions of your Circle?”

“You remove yourself from civilization, are beholden to no one and nothing, and you fancy that makes you free. But in order to achieve anything beyond the indulgence of petulant self-interest, one first requires something against which to brace. What _you_ cannot _imagine_ ,” Vivienne said, rapping her knuckles on the pommel of her saddle for emphasis, “is that the structures you spurn are also your only legitimate source of leverage.”

“Surely you are not so naive as to believe it possible to reform such an institution from the inside,” the apostate scoffed.

“Oh, yes,” Vivienne said, her voice laden with sarcasm, “those who voted to dissolve the Circle are doing _so_ well outside of it. Whose opinion on their progress shall we solicit first, hmm? The desperate teenage blood mage whose viscera are still clinging to your coattails? The farmers burned out of their homes in any of the last dozen villages we passed? The rebels who occupied Redcliffe only to find themselves handed over to the service of a Tevinter magister? The Tranquil _they_ abandoned to murder and mutilation at the hands of the Venatori?”

“That is not—.” Solas cut himself off, his jaw clenching as his eyes fled from hers.

“It’s not what, darling? Not fair? Not what you meant? Not applicable to you, personally, because you are the special unique case who can remake the world to his personal design by napping alone in a field?”

Solas continued to look straight ahead, his gaze fixed on the Seeker and Inquisitor, and sighed. “I take your point, enchanter.”

Vivienne nodded, gave him a magnanimous smirk, and kneed her mount forward to leave the elf to his thoughts once more.

If Solas was an unconnected, self-taught apostate, she was the queen of Ferelden.

**Author's Note:**

> If the Inquisitor asks Vivienne her opinion of Solas, she says, "I don't know what to make of Solas. So much knowledge and so little personal history... I find that... peculiar, don't you?" I doubt Viv guessed "ancient immortal Elvhen mage," but I don't think she ever failed to notice how his story added up (or didn't), nor passed up an opportunity to probe for more information.


End file.
